Kings and Marshals
by burning.with.the.times
Summary: Hansen returns to the Sydney Shatterdome to oversee the training of new Rangers and production of Mark 6 Jaegers to protect Australia from any future Kaiju threat. Secretly he works to repair what was salvaged of Striker Eureka from the Pacific, and in desperate need of rare parts for a Mark 5 Jaeger, Hansen seeks out the help of Melbourne's infamous and elusive Trader King. HH/OC.
1. Chapter 1

_Marshal Hercules Hansen is deployed back to Australia and the newly reopened Sydney Shatterdome, overseeing the training of brand new Rangers and the development and production of several Mark 6 Jaegers to protect Australian coastlines from any future Kaiju threat. While not on duty, though, Hansen begins work in secret to repair what was salvaged of Striker Eureka from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, smuggled to him by the sympathetic Dr. Gottlieb. Due to the rise of Mark 6 technology and Mark 5 Jaegers themselves becoming severely outdated, only the infamous Melbourne-based "Trader King" of all things illegal, especially Jaeger and Kaiju parts, can help Hercules Hansen put Striker Eureka back together again. _

* * *

**I.** First Contact

Hercules Hansen paused only momentarily outside the huge Docklands hangar. _This is for Striker_, the Marshal steeled himself. _For Chuck_. _For once in your life break the law for the right reasons_.

The man knocked on the double-hinged doors sharply before he had time to think anymore rationally. When nobody answered instantly, his clear eyes raised to the heavily clouded evening sky, threatening torrential rain and wind at any moment. _Bloody Melbourne weather_.

Suddenly, the door was swung open a slither. A small foot shot out and propped open the thirty centimetre gap and a thin voice declared from the darkness: "It's Sunday. Docks are closed. Rack off, mate."

"I'm here t'see - " Herc put his own hand around the door and pushed it open a little more. "T'see the Trader King. I contacted him about some Mark 5 parts during the week."

The foot disappeared completely and the heavy double doors threatened to swing shut altogether. Hercules strained against the weight, shoving forward once, twice – then almost fell as the doors gave way beneath his hands and began to open of their own, automated accord.

The waning evening light was brightened by the glaring lights hanging from the cavernous ceiling above. Suddenly, there were at least four men appearing from different angles, approaching him and shouting roughly. _Weapons on the floor!_ _Name and business! ..._


	2. Chapter 2

The waning evening light was brightened by the glaring lights hanging from the cavernous ceiling above. Suddenly, there were at least four men appearing from different angles, approaching him and shouting roughly. _Weapons on the floor!_ _Name and business! _...

**II.** The Trader King

Hercules Hansen had been in far worse spots than this before. The gunmen were all weedy, gangly young things, with tattoos sprawling over the necks and out of their threadbare shirt sleeves. The guns they sported, however, were nothing he could talk down – heavy handled Winchesters – old, but still the best.

"State y'business and put your hands up, old man!" The foremost shouted again roughly.

"Alright, lads, I'm here on business." Hansen raised his hands slowly, pale eyes flickering around and quickly taking in the width and height of the Docklands hangar. "I've been talking to the Trader King."

Then a fourth figure, smaller than the rest by far, emerged from behind a heavily rusted Mark 2 Jaeger shin guard and approached with a slight lilt to her step. Neck-to-ankle in tight black jeans and a black turtleneck, ratty brown hair was pinned up in a bun and the Marshal caught the flash of a tiny blade being whisked up her sleeve as she approached.

Slate grey eyes, as unremarkable as the rest of her, narrowed suspiciously as she stopped a foot away. "Christ, you're him, aren't you? _Marshal Hercules Hansen_." Even the girl's hands were tiny. They waved around in the air somewhat officiously as she spoke his name. "Saviour of the world, and all that. What's Sydney brass like you doing looking for spare Jaeger parts in scummy Melbourne?"

"I mean you no offence, girl, but I came here to buy parts, not be given the third degree."

There was a tense beat of silence as the three tattooed men in threadbare suits turned to stare at Hansen at the same time, with the same exact stare that promised violence. Then the realisation dawned on the Marshal that this girl was the Trader King.

"I'm Jemillah Touraine." Her thin lips parted in a wolfish grin, pushing herself up with milk-white arms until she sat on the workman's table as easily as a child would. "I'm the Trader King."

"_You_?"

"Me." Jemillah clarified, a clipped edge in her voice. "Why does this always come as such a surprise to you Sydney snobs?" She waved the gunmen away and they retreated, sparing Hansen another round of loathsome stares.

"I'm not a _snob _– you're – you're just a girl." Hercules Hansen was legitimately shocked. The last he heard the Australian Federal Police suspected the Trader King to be working out of the Dandenongs, and to be a middle-aged, Caucasian male. Yet here he stood with the _real_ Trader King who defied all of those predictions without so much as a bat of her long-lashed eyelids.

_Long eyelashes?_ Hansen thought to himself sharply, _Watch it mate. You're here for Striker._

"I'm a girl, yes. More accurately, I'm 26. My brother was in Sydney during that last Kaiju attack that Striker Eureka took down. He didn't come back." The revealing moment was swallowed by more hastily spoken words. "So I stepped up and took over the business. Is that enough for you?" Jemillah's rhetorical question was terse, her sharp shoulders hunched defensively. "To be honest it's the only damn reason I agreed to meet you. Striker Eureka, and all that. That machine was a godsend to the likes of us small people."

Hansen felt something in his chest, almost like pride, but he quickly dismissed it.

"You know they call y'the Trader _King_?" Hercules remarked gruffly, trailing a callused hand along the solitary shin-guard of a Mark 2 Jaegar, lain on its side and yet still three times as tall as him.

"They call me a lot of things, Sir." The girl had wandered away with that same uneasy lilt, disappearing behind a pile of discarded Kaiju tick shells as she talked loudly. "Each of them more colourful then the last."

"_Don't call me Sir_." Herc caught himself speak in anger, before restraining himself. "But you're a girl, for chris'sake. And they call you _King_?"

"Most of the names are a lot more _derogatory_ then simply inferring I'm male." Touraine admitted wryly before continuing: "I know it's all the same to you _men_," her head of wild brown hair reappeared, shortly followed by her tiny frame with her arms wrapped around a stack of coiled metal plating. "But I'd rather be called a _King_ then a _cunt_."

Jemillah almost laughed at the torturous expression that swamped Marshal Hansen's face as the expletive exploded out of her in such a furious tone.

" 'Scuse me, Sir, I know you're not used to rough talk anymore, all that high life in Sydney, but down here in Melbourne the guys still like to pin that little tag to any one woman who decides to make a living for herself."

"Just a living, or a bloody empire?" The question came out of Herc's mouth before he had really thought about it, grasping the plating and lifting it out of Jemillah's grasp.

Hansen threw the plating down on the 20 x 20 workman's table easily and glanced up as the Trader King sauntered past, saying, "Calling it an_ empire_ does make all this sound a bit grander, thanks, Pops." She threw her arms up in the air to indicate 'all this' as the colossal Docklands hangar they were currently inside.

"Don't call me Pops." Herc's eyes were on the plating.

"Can't call you Pops, can't call you Sir." The girl propped herself up on the workman's table opposite Herc as he busied himself rolling out the thin plating to inspect it. "What can I call you then?"

"Herc – Hercules Hansen."

"Alright, _Hercules Hansen_." Jemillah repeated the name in a mocking tone. "You can call me Jemillah. An' if I ever hear you call me _girl_ again I'll never sell to you again, and probably cut your balls off and feed them to my tiger."

"_Tiger_?" Herc repeated, with half a laugh before he realised he wasn't sure whether the girl was joking or not.

"I'm the Trader King. Of course I've got a fucking tiger." The brown haired impish woman remarked as coolly as if they were talking about something as mundane as the weather.

A sharp tilt of her head caused a heavy set man all in black to emerge from the shadows, unsettling Hansen, who only moments ago believed he and Touraine were alone in the hangar entirely.

"I'll leave you with my boy here. Pay him for whatever you might want. You need anything else for... whatever it is you're doing that you don't want the government knowing about... _call me_." The last two words were delivered with a coy smile that Hercules looked determinedly away from.

But that didn't stop her from watching her as she left, tiny, waifish thing as she was. _Not five years older then Chuck._

_Chuck. _The familiar clench in his stomach. The same sinking stone...


End file.
